I cannot say that his was my favourite Téchiné to watch so far, and we are far away from "j'embrasse pas" or "my favourite season". Perhaps it is the subject, taken from a fait divers [small news story -Ed.] that did shock me at the time, the story of a young woman who claimed she got attacked in the RER (Parisian commuter trains) for antisemitic reasons. The whole press in France spoke about this hate crime with outrage. Only she had invented it all: the incident never took place.
There are great visual moments, views of a train arriving at a station, views of our heroine skating through trees, a love scene, a scene under the rain, all filmed in video. The problem perhaps is that the rest is also filmed in video and it is not that pleasant to watch. But one gets used to it after a while. There are also great actors; no need I believe to introduce Catherine Deneuve playing the mother or Michel Blanc, as the faithful Jewish friend or, of course, the main actors Emilie Dequenne and Nicholas Duvauchelle very credile as the boyfriend with a troubled past (and present... as you will see).
The main protagonist however is not an actor, it's the RER: you see it, hear it, smell it almost. And it is a good thing to show the Parisian suburbs in a film- yes of course we have La Haine, this masterpiece but Téchiné shows us a more varied picture with poor and rich suburbs, or just, quite simply, grey...
There are great visual moments, views of a train arriving at a station, views of our heroine skating through trees, a love scene, a scene under the rain, all filmed in video. The problem perhaps is that the rest is also filmed in video and it is not that pleasant to watch. But one gets used to it after a while. There are also great actors; no need I believe to introduce Catherine Deneuve playing the mother or Michel Blanc, as the faithful Jewish friend or, of course, the main actors Emilie Dequenne and Nicholas Duvauchelle very credile as the boyfriend with a troubled past (and present... as you will see).
The main protagonist however is not an actor, it's the RER: you see it, hear it, smell it almost. And it is a good thing to show the Parisian suburbs in a film- yes of course we have La Haine, this masterpiece but Téchiné shows us a more varied picture with poor and rich suburbs, or just, quite simply, grey...